(01-25-2018 06:30 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 11:56 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 11:20 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 10:54 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(01-25-2018 10:16 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  1) Not just the G5, FCS and yes, P5, if those schools still can't pay their bills without heavy subsidies.

2) "Local impact" is meaningless for this discussion, because the objection is to student fees. If the local economy really does benefit that way, and there are serious doubts it does, but even if, then that means the local government should kick in to support football, not the students. There's no reason for students to pay high fees so local restaurants and hotels can make more money.

3) I think we all agree that all revenues directly related to athletics have to be counted, such as TV deals, conference payouts, licensing/marketing deals, tickets, concessions, etc.

But what the data show is that for many schools, even with all that added in, football (and athletics generally) brings in far less than it costs, thus the student fees and transfers.

That’s because football is marketing to the university. Your marketing department is an expense item—not a profit center. Why would anyone pay $750,000 to sponsor a NASCAR for one race? All you get is a logo on the paint job of a car racing around the track for an couple of hours. How much money does that logo on the paint job make?

Like all functional area expenses, marketing is actually an investment - firms make a marketing investment in something like sponsoring a NASCAR racer because they expect that to translate into increased revenues that more than offset the costs of sponsorship. If it doesn't, then they won't do it again.

So like any investment, football has to be assessed in terms of its return.

Unfortunately, most schools simply seem to take it on faith that their football teams add more value than they cost. There's precious little evidence for that, save at the biggest-brand schools.

Notre Dame? No doubt it's true when they say that football built their library or their science lab. At LSU, i know that the athletics department is required to transfer at least $7.5 million each year to the university (meaning the actual academic side), and since the SECN kicked in that has risen to $10m. That's a positive ROI.

At G5 schools? Their science lab and library have less materials because money that could have better funded them has been transferred to fund football.

That was my point in the rest of the post above.

First, the entire athletic department costs the school about 1% of its operating budget. It would typically cost twice that much, but generated revenue cuts the cost by half (marketing is essentially subsidized by alumni, fans, and other outside entities).

Most companies spend about 10% of total revenue on advertising and marketing. Many spend far more than that. The athletic department at a school like UCF represents just 10% of the typical marketing budget for a business with 1.5 billion in revenue.

So, basically 90% of any goodwill and name recognition created by the marketing department is generated by the schools sports teams--which account for only 10% of the normal marketing budget. Plus, this doesnt even address its value as a amenity to the students.

There's no evidence that sports teams at UCF (or USF) generate any % of good will, much less 90%. You are just assuming they do.

USF and UCF were both large, growing schools before they got football in the late 1990s. There's no reason to think they wouldn't be where they are right now in terms of enrollment without it.

I'm glad USF has football, take great pride in it, wish we had it when i was there, but I can't defend the current funding mechanism.

Its not much of an assumption. How many times do you hear a schools name when it isnt connected to sports? How many people look at the latest Carnegie list vs how many people catch a game on TV or a score during the evening news broadcast. Much more likely to hear a school name connected to its sports team than due to any other reason.

Oh, and UCF had an enrollment of 20,387 in fall of 1990. Their 2017 fall enrollment is 66,183. Interesting the rate of growth accelerated in the late 1990's--about the time they jumped to FBS. That said, they had been a successful FCS program prior to that (it was 1AA back then).

https://ikm.ucf.edu/historical-enrollment/